Before I begin, let me first start off by saying I’ve read several reviews to get a sense of how reviews are written. I’ve designed this format from a mixture of reviews site and feel this will provide the audience the best sense of my experience. Feel free to comment about any review or even the format of my reviews as I am very open to your feedback. I hope you enjoy this review and find it useful.

I’ve been smoking cigars for 20 years but only recently got serious about the subject. For my first cigar review I asked Bo from Bo’s Cigars (www.boknowscigars.com) to suggest my first pick. Knowing I was a young aficionado he simply asked how much time I had, “45 min to an hour” I replied and he immediately suggested Macanudo newest cigar the Macanudo Cru Royale. So here’s to you Bo…my first review.

Appearance: At 5 x 50, this robusto appeared to be very well constructed without any noticeable defects. Veins are noticeable on the oily, deep brown wrapper which gives visual life to the cigar. The banding is silver with black lettering and edging with hints of blue hugging the barrel. This wrapper differs from Macanudo previous releases. For those aficionados this may provide a break in what you should expect from the smoke. Overall I found the cigar to be simple but attractive.

Construction: The Cru Royale was tightly wrapped with an Ecuadoran Habano wrapper. The Binder is Dominican, actually from La Vega where my mom lived as a child so Macanudo already gets brownie points for that alone. The filler contains long Brazilian, Nicaraguan and Dominican Mata Fina filler. The construction was right on point which allows a nice long burn. I easily had an inch of ash before I tapped it and the way it was burning it could have gone another inch before falling off.

Flavor: A solid medium-bodied to almost full bodied flavor stayed consistent thru the 45-50 minute smoke. The draw was consistent as well and I only needed to relight after letting the cigar rest at 2/3 of the way thru. I experience a full flavored smoke which didn’t overpower me yet had just enough complexity to let me know I had a “real” cigar.

Final Thoughts: I definitely will have this smoke again especially when I want a flavorful cigar without being overwhelmed or over smoked; you know that feeling in your chest when you had too many. It’s a great smoke when you have only an hour to spend and my instincts tell me it would go very well with the Vizacaya VXOP Rum I recently reviewed, I’ll have to try the two together soon. In a year of so I’ll give another review after aging one; I think properly aged the smoke will mature a bit.